Category Archives: Media

History and cultural heritage as a source of inspiration is truly amazing in many ways. The fastness of it, the depth and richness. The endless possibilities in analyzing histories, comparing the past and the present or juxtaposing those. You can interpret it endlessly and use it as a foundation for study, fiction, research and art. This makes it very great, but not unique in the complete body of work we call culture. What makes it so special is that, as property in the public domain, no part of history can be owned by a single person or cooperation.

It may seem really straightforward to you that when I take an era in history, say the French revolution and write a narrative history of this era, that I do not automatically own the rights to that historical event. I have copyright of my work, but the foundation on which this work has been build does not default into my care completely. I can’t bar people from entertaining the same narrative or a completely new interpretation of the French revolution just because I wrote something about it in a particular context.
Now where am I going with this?

The slogan the dutch lobby group BREIN and its operational manager, Tim Kuik, go by is the cheesy and awkward “The art of protecting the creating”. This is an interesting slogan not only because only three words here have merit and the other three have not. These three words are… naturally… “The”, “of” and “the” (again.. so arguably only 2 words.. (but i digress)). These words only have merit because, structurally, these tie the sentence together, regardless of content. The other three words are completely inappropriate for BREIN in every imaginable way.Continue reading The farce of protecting the creative→

Occasionally I visit the “tech” website tweakers.net. Mostly through links, but sometimes just to see what nonsense the editors and the community are whining about this time. Aptly named, for it is seemingly run by a random collection of crystal-meth addicts, this dutch tech site has been popular in the tech scene in the Netherlands for years. Now sensible people understand that popularity does not equate quality and this certainly is the case with this site. Poor and biased reporting, generally a payed lip-service site to the highest bidder, a North Korean mentality like community and not worthy of the label “news”. Continue reading Sites whining about ad-blockers. Cry me a river.→

Internet “laws” or “rules” are generally humorous observation on human behavior on the internet captured in a short neat definition. They are of course superficial generalizations that we can all attest to from experience. Be it the first couple of rules of IT where it states that : “If a program doesn’t work, It needs a manual” or : “If a package is finished, it needs to be expanded”. Rule #34 is a famous one that states that “if something exists, the internet has porn of it” and indeed, this seems true on first glance.

Then there is Godwins law, which states that given any discussion, as it progresses the chance that anybody will use an analogy to WWII, the nazis or Hitler will approach one. This is a funny observation that has its origins in reality for sure. Many frustrated debater will have succumbed to the temptation to compare his adversaries with Nazi’s without good reason and this tendency displayed by most people isn’t praiseworthy.Continue reading Conversation stoppers : Godwin→